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Academic Espionage Additional Information

Academic Espionage Card Review

Another insane card from this expansion. On the one hand, shuffling a bunch of random cards into your deck was never a good thing. On the other hand, those cards now cost 1 mana each. Exactly, 1 mana. So, on average, a huge discount will be applied.

On the one hand, I already want to play around with it. On the other, from the competitive side, I absolutely dislike this card, because there is A LOT of RNG involved. Such RNG cards are fun if they’re bad, but this one might not be. While I know that it’s somewhat of the best case scenario, imagine losing a game as a Druid to a Rogue drawing a 1 mana Ultimate Infestation from this, into a bunch of other 1 mana stuff from your class? It would feel horrible.

This card will obviously be an auto-include in Burgle/Pick Pocket/Tess Greymane Rogue, since it specifically synergizes with cards from other classes. It will make it much easier to keep the weapon (Spectral Cutlass) alive, and Tess is going to be huge once you drop her. Will it be good enough to put the deck into the meta? Hard to say, but it might be.

Basically, the only downside of this card is spending 4 mana for no immediate effect (well, you can always Preparation it, but that’s still 2 cards for no immediate effect). That said, with 10 cards shuffled, you should be able to “take” that mana back quite quickly, often after the first card you draw. And of course, you can still end up getting a bunch of bad cards that cost 0-2 mana anyway and the discount will be wasted. But the pool of bad cards is considerably smaller when everything costs 1 anyway. Like, normally you wouldn’t be happy with getting something like Cruel Dinomancer. 6 mana 5/5 is bad. But a 1 mana 5/5 is suddenly pretty damn good.

Another cool synergy is the one with Myra's Unstable Element. Not only you can get a full hand, but if you play this afterwards, you still end up with a bunch of cards in your deck. And each one of them is discounted. I could see Miracle Rogue with the Legendary Spell running a single copy of this card just to make that combo work. But even without Myra, remember that Rogues have some nice way to cycle or draw cards. Like, playing this during Gadgetzan Auctioneer turn. Or playing Prep + Sprint after. Or even dropping an Elven Minstrel and hoping to draw some good 1 mana minion (doesn’t have to be great, some random 4/4 is still great tempo-wise). And after you overcome the initial tempo loss of this card, it will just start getting value.

I honestly think that this card is broken, and not necessarily in terms of power (because yeah, it still does nothing immediately) – but I still think it’s pretty damn strong. I feel like it might get nerfed in a way Yogg-Saron, Hope's End was – even if it wasn’t completely broken on the ladder, it just ruined the competitive play.

I will definitely run this over Pick Pocket. In fact, I might not even run Pick Pocket in my Tess deck when I replace it with this. For 4 mana I get twice the amount of cards compared to a 10 mana Pick Pocket and they cost 1! Sure I don’t get them in my hand, but I’ve always felt that Pick Pocket was very weak. Hallucination, Blink Fox, and Academic Espionage. That sounds good to me.

i have to agreed yes its op but its also balance card why:some meta deck have around under ten class card in deck
you have to drwa this to play it so find it in 330 card is a bit hard
many class card doesnt fit rogue synergies exp stealing card from odd pala means nothing in total so dont worry at first week players play it ALOT and then throw it away OR they keep playi g it and so called deer blizzard nerf it but i will use it XD

Am I reading this right? To me it seems you take 10 random cards from your opponent’s deck. That is usually more than a third. Seems quite likely any combo deck’s win condition now is in your deck. Gnomeferatu could, with luck, destroy combo decks, and this is 10 Gnomeferatus (without the bodies)?

Now Renounce was played in a meme deck, however could still win you a lot of games if you’re lucky. (ofcourse this had a lot to do with the Barnes-Y’Shaarj combo).
Renounce has the upside that it’s cheaper and it can get rid of useless cards in your hand. But because of the existens of Preperation and because I think changing your hand in random cards is overal bad (including making them cost 1 less), these upsides are almost non-existant.
Espionage on the other hand has the huge upside of you being able to draw a 1 mana high tempo card. Combo this with Rogue’s amazing carddraw:
-Fan of knives (Shiv or Thalnos)
-Elven Minstrel
-Gadgetzan (works well with 1 mana spells)
-Sprint
Running a lot of carddraw also makes rogues strongest card, , even stronger.
Combine this with Valeera the Hollow and you might have yourself a control rogue.

Now I’m not saying it’s OP, it’s randomness will probably (at least a little bit) make this a meme card. But keep in mind the amount of different decks that are playable right now, some of them also look like meme decks. I think it might be unwise to say this card is unplayable because you’ll probably be surprised.

I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for deck/class stealing cards, so seeing this card printed makes me very happy. That said, I’m not entirely sure how much play it will see. On the plus side, this card has the potential to regularly generate huge amounts of value. Most class cards, for most classes, are at least playable at 1 mana. However, as others have pointed out, you’d be spending 4 mana that wouldn’t impact the board state, and you still have to actually draw the cards you generated. Its rate of play may depend on the meta of Boomsday more than anything else.

People largely overestimate the size of random class cards.
An average class card costs 3.5 mana. Which means you get a 2.5 mana discount for each of the shuffled cards that you draw. Those are bad cards, so let’s say it’s a 2 mana tempo gain, and that’s being generous.
If you play this when there are 20 cards in your deck, you draw a discounted card every 3 draws. So it’s horrendous: you need 6 turns to get your mana back, and at this point you’re still down 1 card, so you need 9 turns to break even.
There is synergy with tess, spectral dagger, and myra’s, but the card is so bad in the first place, you shouldn’t be too hopeful.

If you use your turns four and five to do little else other than hopefully getting a god turn six and beyond, then you are really asking for any deck faster than Big Spell Mage to run your over during the two free turns you’re giving them. Perhaps you’ll survive, but without getting a massive taunt or board clearing spell in the first five cards off your deck, you’re probably going to still lose.

Does anybody remember the game hearthstone comes from? Was there ever a control rogue there? The rogue class is meant for high burst damage, stuns, poison, etc.. am I missing something here? Was anybody able to build a tank rogue on wow?

This is a pure fun card that will bring experimentation in deck building to the game. The devs are very smart…..they want to explore concepts and they print cards like this and let the community do JUST THAT. I’ve played this game since closed beta and the game has never left that state. This will always be a “beta” game. You make rules and then make cards that do things within those rules. The “if and only if”, “and”, and “either or” play into the rule set. The devs are constantly tweaking the game and will forever do so. The cycle of release, wait and tweak is never-ending. When people see a card such as this the first thing that comes to mind are the best case scenarios. I’d love a 1 mana Pyroblast as much as anyone but the randomness ensures that the card will never be consistent. One of the most fun deck types I’ve played is Casino Mage. You hope for the best and if you are lucky enough to land on “odd black” you win. The deck is fun to play because of the randomness. You never feel bad losing because of the exact same thing….you can’t control randomly generated cards; the excuse for losing is already built-in. Casino-Rogue will be a thing with this card, I guarantee it. The devs put things like this into the mix to purposely test how powerful or not the randomness is. I don’t think the game needs cards like this to make it “new and exciting” again but rather the game needs new rulesets aka “modes” to make the existing cards have whole new meanings. When you have 60 starting health the game is changed. When you start with 5 mana the game is changed. The devs do this with brawls but it’s not the same environment.

I for one will make this card gold and try it out with a draw type deck with Valeera in it. The pure randomness and game states you will find yourself in will be endless. Nothing like having 1 health decking a 1 mana pyroblast to win….thats just hilarious shit. We will all know soon enough what is going to work and what isn’t once the cards are all face up on the table!

Except there is a new card that shuffles 3 minions in your deck, you can already have 2 copies by why not make it 4 with your passive DK power….fatigue is no reason to run this card when 1 copy of the other can give you infinite.

I see a bunch of people whining over a “cool” card, that can either create awesome or completely useless cards (or a mix) which will only delay the Rogue, and over that you still have to draw them, and hope for the best.
Why so many people are crying over these random creators is beyond me.

Because no matter what card it is, it costs 1.
Nobody cried about Archbishop Benedictus even if the priest will win against any control deck 80% of the times if he plays Archbishop because this card didn’t generate 1 mana 12/12.

Because people are dumb and supremely incapable of accurately estimating odds of picturing the future, like the original person that responded to your post.

Lol 1 mana 12/12? You know the odds of that happening? And then the odds that it’s one of the first few cards shuffled into your deck? And then that you survive long enough to draw and play it? And the odds that it matters by then after you just spent 4 mana to do nothing for that turn?

Obviously good to get a bunch of 1-cost cards, but seems to me like it’s mostly a way to make MUE playable. If you play it with this in hand (or draw this off of MUE), you don’t die to fatigue; you cast this, att ten cards to your deck, and now you have a refilled hand AND a partially-refilled deck. With cards that all cost 1.

I feel like this is one of those cards that people overrate for one simple reason.

Is it strong? Yes. Does it have good synergy with Tess? Yes.

The problem, and with largely peoples failure playing this game, is WIN CONDITION. People play “great combos” and “good plays” but none of it is actually a win condition. They rely all on your opponent and being able to just bash them down rather than having a consistent and strong win condition.

This looks great to the average player, because they lack focus in their deck and don’t realize the longer it takes to get to their win condition, if they have one at all, the worse they will do.

It’s a fun and interesting card and in a deck with a LOT of good draw, it could be good but the focus is better used on drawing your win condition. 2 or 3/5.

Just because your deck has a win condition doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it. That’s your basic ladder decks that suck the fun out of the game running into the same 3-5 decks over and over. I play for fun too and like to just mess around. Win condition doesn’t always=unfun, it’s when people aren’t creative enough to come up with their own brew that it gives win conditions a bad name.

That being said we are also rating cards on their viability in the competitive game. I find playing Grul fun and watching him grow when an opponent can’t handle it just for giggles. Does that mean he is a 5/5 because he brings a smile to my face? No. He’s not even a 2/5 card.

This card is not good in any decently competitive deck. Someone brought up fatigue but we already have a new card as a sort of “gang up” and we can run 2 copies of it for infinite deck. Why not use that to keep your deck full with things you actually need? It’s the better option of the 2.

Fun wise, yes, this card is awesome and will make a funny Tess deck that I’m sure I will enjoy a lot. Otherwise it’s not very good.

4 Mana and a card is a huge investment, but the payoff could potentially be powerful, and there are more survivability cards now, the hero card, the secret similar to ice block. Could work. This plus hero power for rogue do I fun. Hard to judge. Big initial sacrifice, but your have to stay alive.

SERIOUSLY. Can you pls stop making rogue OP. You do know miracle rogue, that has a chance to win againts ANY deck. you do realize miracle decks are still there somewhere. You do realize the Auto win mill decks that rogue uses. Combined with the immune to fatigue deal 15 dmg to your oponents face lifesteas for the same dmg for for one mana. That no card can beat. I mean come on can you pls stop doing that. Why do rogues get auto win decks. Isn;t it enough that with tess you get full board of cards every turn. The most powerfull board clear that is even a basic card. 3 times the mana discounts that druids get. AND NOW THIS. You do know the first casino deck was priest. Where did you put any effort in making casino priest viable. And now add 20 cards that cost 1 to your deck. THE FUCK renounce darkness was powerfull and it gave a discount of one mana this thing literally makes those cards one mana. AND FUCK YEAH CLASS CARDS are much better than what priest gets. Since priest gets cards from your oponents deck. That means you can get tons of rubish cards with 0 synergy. While class cards are guaranteed to be OP. And rogue unlike priest can utilize even the weapon buffs. And why the fuck anti mill in rogue decks. You know druid mill decks were the first ones ever. And the jade infinite deck got countered the very next expansion they appeared. There is a 90 turn limit you know. With this you are just going on with a 50 cards deck. And on top of that for 4 mana. Why is it that the most retarded decks that plague the formats get suport cards while the others just suck big time.

The guy is right, if you play control decks without any real win condition like thief priest, greedy quest priest, dead man’s hand warrior, N’Zoth mage or whatever, rogue will be overpowered as fuck.
The problem is that all meta decks are aggresive/combo, so rogue is bad because of this. xD

What? The meta is super slow right now. Combo decks, sure, but also lots of control decks.

As for the card, 3/5 as is, 4/5 with support. HUGE value fatigue card but requires a lot of support. Looks insane at first glance though. It is kinda 4 mana do nothing though. Dire Frenzy looked insane too and it’s a fun fringe card at best.

1: This card is a four mana spell that would have to be played in a semi tempo deck because rogue control doesn’t necessarily exist. Unless Blizzard prints cards that create a control archetype for Rogue then this is a wasted turn four or a wasted prep spell.
2: Don’t forget that ITS A RANDOM CARD from the other class. You could get 10 awful cards that don’t impact the game whatsoever. You could get 7 cards that don’t impact the game whatsoever. You could get 3 cards that don’t. The success of this card solely depends on the strength of the random cards THAT YOU DRAW…which leads me to my last point…
3: You have to draw the cards…and you have to draw the cards that matter…if you count auctioneer in this process then you are playing this on four, wasting that turn, then waiting until turn 7 or 8 to get any good value out of auctioneer and THEN hoping that the cards you play have any advantageous impact on the game.

Tl;Dr: A deck built around this card won’t be successful but I do see this card seeing play. 6 out of 10 for me.

The fact that rogue cant play control because its lack of survavilty triggers me so much, i love rogue, but you know, playing odd rogue is not what i mean. Even miracle rogue turned aggresive nowadays. I really hope for a spell or even a weapon wich can help control rogue decks.

You’d probably be better off hoping for a true successor to Sludge Belcher, Refreshment Vender, AND Antique Healbot. Those three cards are at least two thirds of the reason why Control Rogue was ever possible. It was never because of the weapons rogue has one Blade Flurry was nerfed.

Yeah quite right, the lack of healing or armor gain on rogue, the fact that it never got a single class taunt, and its only aoe options being Fan of Knives and Blade Flurry makes it completly useless as a control. And yet hunter keeps getting more and more control cards every expansion.

I think its because turning a aggressive class into a more control oriented one is probably something someone at Team 5 really likes the idea of and also Hunter’s basic and classic set of cards is not nearly as strong as Rogue’s.

Wow

July 26, 2018 at 4:00 pm

The power level of control rogue can get is infintie if he gets survivality spells.
N’Zoth back in hand because of the 0 mana spell “Return a minion in your hand, it costs (2) less” is horribly op and you can’t beat it.

But you are missing the fact that there is support for this card with the legendary spell, now the fact that you have to DRAW them it is a pain but rogue doesnt lack this tools, NOW im not saying you´re wrong BUT give it a little credit

thos eare class cards they are always much better than the regulard ones. And they cost 1. On top of that bitchy deathknight you get. you can replay cards that aren’t even meant to be able to be cast 2 times in a turn.
You know what else you can find. A mirror match. Where all those 10 cards are rogue class cards.
DO YOU EVEN SEE A BAD ROGUE CLASS CARD IN STANDARD.

Why can’t rogue play control. It has the strongest board clear, Vanish. It has saps so all the big minions don;t see play. You have weapons for endless removal. And enough lifesteal ot outheal any class. Not to mention their Deathknight is the best control card ever printed. With all the 5 mana assasinations that you can play TWICE. Assasinate. Onyx spellstone. vilespine. You don;t even need to swing with your weapon. And no minion can escape your vanish. not with deathrattle not with divine shield. You can’t play around anything. The only card ever printed that can compete againts the legendary rogue weapon is gnomeferatu. And it works after the rogue draws all his cards and hits you 3 times with the most upgraded kingsbane. Good luck surviving that.

Vanish is six mana and is the only board clearing spell available to the class
Onyx Spell stone is five mana and requires deathrattle minions to be played to become even almost playable
Assassinate is five mana and only kills one minion
Vilespine needs to be comboed to kill a minion and costs five mana by itself
Valeera the Hollow costs nine mana and can only save you for one turn
There are no good lifesteal cards for Rogue and as such Rogue has no good healing options
The weapons Rogue has at its disposal are not very good compared to Paladin, Shaman, or Warrior.
Kingsbane requires an entire deck built around it to be viable
You can only play two Saps and two Preparations
The draw Rogue has is limited to Auctioneer, which needs a deck built around him, or Evlen Minstrel, which can only draw minions, for the most part

Those are all the reasons why control Rogue has not been possible since the rotation of cards like Antique Healbot, Dark Iron Skulker, Refreshment Vendor, Azure Drake, and Sludge Belcher .

Okey okey, so, Pick pocked cost 2 mana and give you 1 enemy class card, you can use it 5 times for 10 mana and get 5 cards, this card cost 4 mana and give you 10, BUT also reduces it cost to 1 Mana, really blizzard? okey they are put into your deck, and affect your tempo, but isnt like rogue have no draw cards mechanism , BUT also they cost 1 mana, really blizzard? have i to say the ridiculous value you get from this card? even if the cards you get from this are thrash, THEY COST 1 MANA, oh my god dude, even a regular 3-4 mana card from another class at cost 1 would be good. thanks blizzard, we just suspected who your favourite classes were, now we can confirm.

Very broken, unbalanced , the game is dying
10 cards , they cost 1 ? This helps rouge to to build unlimited deck especially with the new card which shuffles 3 copies of a friendly minion..
Also this makes Tess very overpowered

The value is insane, but unless the format slows down even further than it already has, the absolutely zero tempo gained through playing this card will make it unplayable outside of the most value oriented Rogue decks.
Yes, the tempo can easily be regained when you top deck the cost reduced cards, but the upfront cost of four mana’s worth of tempo to get nothing immediately will be far, far too much for just about deck outside of a control match-up.

Maybe it will see play with prep, which will reduce the cost to only one mana. Might not matter for your tempo that way and rogue has a lot of card draw. As you said, topdecking the right cards is still important.

Not gonna say how strong this card is or isn’t.
Although I’m pretty sure in most scenarios it’s not (and they do play-test these cards before releasing them, right?).

But the variance of this card is off the fucking charts. 1 mana Blood Imp/Freezing Potion/Innervate/etc. vs 1 mana DK Guldan/Jaina/Ultimate Infestation…
Although even the regular, not that great, 4-6 mana cards can be pretty busted when they only cost 1 and happen to fit the situation perfectly (and the opponent can’t realistically play around them).
And so the highroll game breaking potential is definitely there for people to try to take advantage of it.

So it’s definitely a 10/10 on the stupid, toxic design scale.

Hey, let’s make a pure RNG card that’ll either roll complete trash or give some busted cards that cost 1 mana each and single-handedly win the game that should’ve been lost otherwise.
Let’s also maintain the facade that we care about the competitive scene, and push for HS becoming an Olympic sport.

It doesn’t even matter if the card sees zero competitive play, it’s still dumb. And if it does see competitive play, then it’s also pure cancer.

it gains back its tempo via making all the cards cost 1, in a slow format this card is insanely broken, in an aggro format not as much, plus it helps tess alot…… and at the VERY least,… it would of been a more suitable legendary than the other rogue one.

This card seems good on paper and probably arena, but it’s actually not that great in constructed. 4 mana no tempo gain, and rogue needs tempo to win. Sure it adds value in fatigue but there are other better fatigue decks out there. Plus there’s no synergy with anything as all the cards are random. Adding cards to your deck also means deck consistency goes down, not to mention a lot of time the random cards are probably useless. In late game when you have so much mana, a few mana discount isn’t too big of a deal anyway.
3/5 max

The potential saving grace of the card is with the lowered cost it’s a lot easier to convert the value into tempo. You just need to draw them. I could see this being a really strong piece of a new deck I just don’t think it’s an auto include.

This is an insane miracle card. It also makes unstable element viable in a more control oriented deck. Remeber, miracle usually starts slow then explodes after turn 6. Even if a bad card is generated, then its 1 mana, so its not unplayable. Plus any spell will cycle itself with auctioneer. I could see your point if the cards were full cost, but it costs 1. The card is more broken in standard than arena because one can garuntee cycle. Its really good in any deck that isn’t odd.

The kind of decks this card would be a great against are already decks Miracle Rogue would tend to win out against. This does nothing to compensate for the weakness of Miracle decks generally, aggressive decks, and giving up four mana’s worth of tempo in the midgame against an aggressive deck like Odd Rogue or most Hunter decks is basically the equivalent of pressing the concede button unless you topdeck a twisting nether, vanish, or another similar board clearing card.

This card is four mana do nothing, and when I see this, I see this set’s version of Cataclysm from Kobolds and Catacombs. It might make the deck finally work to a really forced extent.

Sure a value oriented Rogue probably plays enough draw to make this worth it in the long run, but that’s the thing. It has to be had in the long run. Burgle Rogue is a deck that get’s slaughtered by anything that can kill it before it can create value from the myriad of cards it generates and even its best match-ups are against decks without much of a win condition to begin with.

I also stand by the fact that the best counter to a Burgle Rogue would be any other Rogue deck. This card does not help resolve that fact nor does it do anything for the decks inherent weakness against anything faster than Big Spell Mage.

It’s exiting, it’s big, and it will help the deck win out against control and value oriented decks, but it’s far from absolutely game breaking.

One would play this card in either a Miracle Rogue or Pick Pocket/Burgle/Thief Rogue.

This is an auto include for a Burgle Rogue without question since there is no card that generates as many class cards as cheaply as this does. Plus, that deck is fine with gaining gradual value over time.

However, playing this in a Miracle Rogue deck would mean this is the only card in the deck that does not and cannot generate any sort of tempo when it is played. The only other card that could be said to generate little to no tempo would be Elven Minstrel since it is a four mana 3/2 but it is a better arcane intellect, making it at least five mana in value.
Miracle Rogue also already has really good match-ups against value oriented and combo based decks like Even Warlock, Taunt Druid, and Sudderwock Shaman, making this a win more card against those at best. What the deck needs is better anti-aggro tools rather than a card that improves a match-up that is already tilted in their favor.

Getting a one mana Tirion Fordring would be great and would probably win most games that happens in, but the upfront cost of getting to that is going to end up being too great.

I will have fun with this until it’s nerfed to hell and back.
You see, I’m a long time miracle rogue player, and nothing annoys me more than running out of cards. Now I have more cards than I know what to do with. And since they cost 1, I can use the spells with auctioneer. Blizzard, what’s with the sudden rogue love? I’ve felt near abandoned for a while. (Not that I’m complaining)
7/5 (will be reduced when nerfed)

lol at first I thought it said from your opponents *deck.* That would be op. This is not. It doesn’t fit into any top tier deck at the moment, and 10 random cards, no matter how cheap they are, would screw up the goals of current top Rogue decks.

It does, however, give the Burgle deck a real chance to finally be a legit top deck. Putting unstable element into a burgle deck and then playing this, lab recruiter, or other deck-adding cards after playing unstable element? Potentially killer. This is the kind of Rogue deck I’ve always wanted to play and have never been able to.

Bonkers! The question almost isn’t “is it good”, but “how do you maximally exploit it?” Stuff your deck with cycle cards so you can get your discount cards nice and fast? Then drop Tess Greymane to hopefully make a checkmate? Or just follow this up with Myra’s Unstable Element and have the swingiest, randomiest swing turn ever?

WHAT. THE. EFFFF!!!!! Come on, Blizzard. Burgle effect is a casual archetype, let us enjoy it like it is. Why would you print this broken a$$ card????? WHY???? Let the cards cost (2) less, like Renounce Darkness or so, but cost (1). What in the world? It’s not like Rogue doesn’t have card draw, for goodness sake! Rated 10/5 stars, and I thought the Flobbidinous Floop or whatever its name is was broken. This outpaces it by miles. They cost (1), LOL!!! I say this as a Rogue fan, this type of cards are NOT HEALTHY for the game!

Yes! My spectral cutlass/tess greymane rogue deck may finally work and be somewhat competitive. Such a fun class to play and such a huge pain for the opponent. This may require a gadgetzan version since you could easily use up all your opponent’s class cards if they only cost one. Most exciting card for me since I’ve been trying to make a card stealing deck work since the days of Burgle and Ethereal Peddler (but I don’t much care to play in Wild).

If you play Myra’s element and then play this you have a new deck of ten random cards that cost 1 from your opponents class. While that seems strong it really depends on how well rogue can take advantage of the lowered cost. By drawing the new cards they could convert it into a powerful tempo boost. Or they could use them as extra value along side larger threats from hand. Or do something cheeky with faldori strider. Anyway it seems pretty good

From what y’all are saying I’m thinking you forgot how many bad cards there are. And that they are completely random class cards from your opponents class. You could even get a one mana inervate. If you are going to throw away your win conditions to play a bad arena deck… ok

Also they won’t all be spell. So gadgetzan is not a combo. And if you use it before destroying your deck you will just draw cards that you don’t want and don’t work in your deck. On average this adds only like one or two bomb cards and then a bunch of crap. And it doesn’t matter so much that they are 1 mana because rogue has a hard time usefully filling out mana in the late game